Trump nominates Lance Schroyer to lead ICE

Donald Trump said he will nominate Lance Schroyer, a former Oklahoma state trooper and US Marine, as the next director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to The Guardian. Schroyer would replace David Venturella, who has been performing the duties of ICE director, and would take over an agency that has not had a Senate-confirmed leader since early 2017.

The nomination is a reminder of how much of US immigration enforcement now runs through acting officials and temporary arrangements. Markwayne Mullin, the Department of Homeland Security secretary, urged the Senate to confirm Schroyer quickly and said it has been 11 years since the chamber confirmed an ICE director. That gap has allowed administrations to run the agency through placeholders while still expanding the machinery of detention and deportation, with accountability concentrated in internal chains of command rather than in a confirmation process designed to force public scrutiny.

Trump framed the choice in operational terms—“locking up serious criminals” and removing “illegal aliens”—and tied Schroyer’s background to Oklahoma’s cooperation with federal enforcement under the 287(g) program, which deputizes state and local officers for immigration work. The program shifts day-to-day enforcement decisions closer to local police departments, while the political consequences—community tension, litigation, and the costs of detention—remain distributed across cities, courts, and federal budgets. Rights groups, The Guardian reports, argue that the administration’s actions violate civil liberties and create an unsafe environment for ethnic minorities, a dispute that tends to be adjudicated after arrests and removals have already happened.

ICE has also become a flashpoint because mistakes and aggressive tactics are no longer abstract. The Guardian notes that ICE agents fatally shot two US citizens, Alex Pretti and Renee Good, in Minnesota in January, prompting nationwide protests. Against that backdrop, Trump’s promise of deportations “at a rate never seen before” functions as both a policy goal and a political signal: success is measured in visible enforcement metrics—arrests, detentions, removals—rather than in quieter outcomes such as fewer illegal crossings or fewer wrongful stops.

Schroyer’s nomination now goes to a Senate that has grown accustomed to an ICE leadership structure that can operate for years without a confirmed director.

Trump’s announcement was posted on Truth Social, alongside a note that he won all 77 Oklahoma counties in the 2016, 2020, and 2024 elections.